Story 203(ii) - The End of Time Part 2

In which everyone on Earth is now the Master, whilst on Gallifrey Rassilon plots the return of the Time Lords. It is the final day of the Time War, and Rassilon attends a meeting of the High Council. He is determined that Gallifrey will not fall, even though the conflict is trapped in a temporal lock. It is reported that the Doctor has taken a powerful weapon called the Moment, and could use it at any time to bring the war to an end - through the destruction of both the Time Lords and the Daleks.
On Earth, at the Naismith mansion, the Doctor and Wilf have been captured by the Master. Wilf's phone rings, which surprises the Master as he did not make the call. It is Donna. She has run outside, and is starting to recall her time with the Doctor, which will prove fatal. The Master sends her neighbours to capture her, but the Doctor had built in a safety measure should she begin to remember. She collapses as a psychic blast knocks out her attackers. The Doctor and Wilf are rescued by the Vinvocci, Addams and Rossiter, and make for the basement. Here they use a teleport to travel up to the Vinvocci spaceship which is in hidden orbit above the planet. The teleport is disabled to prevent them being pursued - but it also means they cannot get back to Earth. The Master orders UNIT to try to trace the ship, but the Doctor sabotages it so that the Vinvocci cannot flee as they plan to do.

One of the High Council is a mystic known as The Visionary. She interprets Gallifrey's prophesies, and indicates that she may have the answer Rassilon seeks. She taps out a four-beat rhythm - the heartbeat of a Time Lord. It is known that there are two Time Lords outside the time lock - the Doctor and the Master. They will use one of them to forge a link between Gallifrey and the outside universe. Rassilon decides to transmit that beat to the Master - selecting the moment when, as a boy, he had looked into the Untempered Schism. This is the source of the drumming which has plagued the Master his entire life. To establish a connection, Rassilon then sends a diamond from the tip of his staff to Earth through a crack in the time-lock - a type of diamond only to be found on Gallifrey. On the spaceship, Wilf is once more visited by the mysterious woman in white. He later gives the Doctor his old National Service revolver, which he had brought to the Nasmaith mansion. He insists that the Doctor should not put the Master before the population of Earth, just because he is another Time Lord. The Doctor sees the diamond fall to Earth. It is found by the Master, who realises its implication. He must use it to create the link to Gallifrey. he broadcasts to the spaceship what he has found. The Doctor also realises the implication of this, and so reactivates the ship's engines.

The spaceship can now be tracked from Earth and so the Master prepares to launch a missile strike against it. The Doctor flies the ship into the atmosphere. Wilf and the Vinvocci man the ship's weapons to shoot down the missiles, whilst the Doctor pilots the ship back to the mansion. Taking Wilf's revolver with him, he leaps from the vessel and crashes through the mansion's glass ceiling. Gallifrey begins to materialise next to the Earth, threatening to tear the planet apart. In the mansion, Rassilon and some of his council appear. Wilf forces the Vinvocci to land and rushes into the building. Rassilon has with him two Council members who opposed his plan - and one of them is the woman whom Wilf has been seeing. The Doctor recognises her. The Master plans to use the Immortality Gate to turn every Time Lord into himself as well, whilst Rassilon's great plan is for the Time Lords to become beings of pure energy, relinquishing their physical form. This will lead to the destruction of Time itself - as the Ood had foreseen in their nightmares. The Doctor can stop Gallifrey emerging fully if he breaks the link to Earth - by killing the Master. He knows that the Time Lords were corrupted by the Time War and are just as much a threat to the universe now as the Daleks have been. he s torn between shooting the Master - or shooting Rassilon. he decides instead to shoot the device which houses the diamond. The Master then attacks Rassilon and is dragged away with them as the Time Lords vanish - sent back into the last day of the Time War.

Everyone on Earth is returned to normal, and Donna is found by her mother and fiance. Wilf has become trapped in the control booth of the Immortality Gate. There are two booths and one must be manned at all times, but the device is about to overload and flood the chambers with lethal radiation. He knocks four times on the glass door to attract the Doctor's attention... The Doctor has survived the fall from the spaceship, and the battle between Master and Rassilon, but realises that this is to be his fate - to sacrifice his life to save Wilf. he releases Wilf and enters the booth himself, and his body is heavily irradiated. The Doctor emerges, his wounds now healed. The regeneration has started. he decides to make the most of the time remaining to him by visiting some of his old friends. he saves Martha Jones and Mickey Smith - now married and acting as freelance alien hunters - from a Sontaran soldier. He visits a space saloon where he finds a morose Captain Jack - and links him up with Midshipman Frame, late of the spaceship Titanic. He saves Luke Smith from being run over, and sees Sarah Jane Smith from a distance. She realises that this is the last time she will see him - at least in this incarnation. He attends a book signing, as the granddaughter of Joan Redfern has published a copy of his Journal of Impossible Things which he left with her in 1913. He then goes to see Donna Noble happily married to Lance. He meets Sylvia and Wilf and gives them a gift for Donna - a lottery ticket bought with money he had borrowed from Donna's late father.
His last visit is to the Powell Estate on New Year's Eve, 2004, where he sees Rose and Jackie Tyler. He keeps himself to the shadows as he tells her he knows she will have an amazing 2005. His health rapidly fading, he staggers back to the TARDIS. Ood Sigma appears to him, indicating that it is now time for his song to end. He doesn't want to go, but the Doctor regenerates explosively, wrecking the TARDIS. A new, younger Doctor suddenly finds that his ship is about to crash...

The End of Time Part 2 was written by Russell T Davies, and was first broadcast on January 1st, 2010. It was the last of the 2009 Special episodes, although - as you can see from that broadcast date - changes in scheduling of these meant that it wasn't shown until the start of the following year.
It marks the end of David Tennant's tenure as the Doctor, as well as Russell T Davies' time as showrunner, and Julie Gardner's as fellow exec-producer. Matt Smith is introduced in the closing moments as the Eleventh Doctor, in a sequence overseen by new showrunner Steven Moffat.
As the end of an era, it marks a few more departures - at least for now. Moffat will introduce a new TARDIS - both inside and out, although the 2005 TARDIS console room will return for cameos in Series 6 and in The Day of the Doctor (when the old police box shell will also be seen).
This is the last time (at least to date) we see a number of companion characters who featured throughout Davies' tenure. These include Donna, Martha and Rose, as well as Sylvia, Wilf, Jackie, Mickey and Captain Jack. Sarah and Luke will continue with their own adventures, and even meet the new Doctor, but sadly this was to be Lis Sladens' final appearance in Doctor Who.
A couple of other characters cameo - including Russell Tovey's Midshipman Frame and Jessica Hynes as a descendant of Joan Redfern - named Verity Newman (in recognition of two of the programmes' principal founders).

At the time it was also to be the final appearance by John Simm as the Master. He publicly stated that David Tennant was his Doctor, and he didn't envisage ever returning to the role. The Master is last seen battling Rassilon as they are dragged back into the Time War.
There are also a few alien cameos, especially in the space bar sequence where Jack meets Frame. We see a Judoon, a pair of Hath, Graske, Sycorax, Slitheen and a drunken Adipose, whilst Martha and Mickey are fighting against a Sontaran, Jask, once again played by Dan Starkey. Jack's appearance ties in with the conclusion to Torchwood: Children of Earth, where he had left the planet full of remorse for sacrificing his grandson.
The identity of the woman in white (Clare Bloom) is never made explicit, and fans speculated that she could be Susan, Romana or the Doctor's mother. Davies later stated that she was supposed to be the latter.
Only one new significant character is added in the second half of the story - The Visionary. She is an old woman covered in henna-like tattoos, and was played by Brid Brennan.

Overall, it is a satisfying conclusion to an incredibly popular phase of the programme. David Tennant is given a lot to do - and does it all excellently. Bernard Cribbins gives a superb performance, and Simm tones things down a bit for the second half of the story, and is the better for it. Some fans dislike the story for its extended conclusion, as the Doctor makes his farewell visits to old friends. I personally don't have a problem with this. Like Jon Pertwee chasing Lupton in a variety of modes of transport, in Part Two of Planet of the Spiders, it is indulgent, but Tennant (and Davies) deserved to be indulged. It was nice to be able to say farewell to these popular characters, who are sorely missed in the following seasons.
Things you might like to know:

• Davies long considered having the Time Lords ally themselves with the Daleks to end the Time War. He contacted Steven Moffat to see what he might be planning for the Daleks in his first season. Moffat was going to attempt a sort of relaunch for them, with a radical redesign, so Davies elected to omit them.
• Timothy Dalton was unsure how to pitch his performance as Rassilon, until he was reminded that he was a warrior. He had watched a few episodes of the revived series on BBC America, so was familiar with the latest incarnation of the show.
• Have a hunt through You Tube and you'll find David Tennant's farewell video, where he performs The Proclaimers' I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles) with various cast members. Many of the crew also feature. Elsewhere you'll find the viseo dedicated to Davies and Gardner - with Tennant, Barrowman and Tate performing a variation of Victoria Wood's Ballad of Barry and Freda.
• The US President is said to be Barrack Obama. The Sound of Drums had featured a fictional POTUS, whilst UK Prime Ministers have also been made up - though Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair have both been PM in the Doctor Who universe as they have been mentioned in earlier stories.
• The Vinvocci spaceship is called The Hesperus, although this is only mentioned in the DW: Confidential documentary. The Hesperus was a real clipper ship, the subject of an 1842 poem - The Wreck of the Hesperus - by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
• For a long time Davies planned to have the Doctor die in a much more low key fashion - saving a family he'd only just met, who were trapped on a damaged spaceship.
• Davies was insistent that all of the farewell scenes should be included - apart from Jessica Hynes'. She was about to travel overseas for work and it was not known if they were going to be able to get her. Her scenes were the first to be filmed, so they could catch her before she left the country.
• The Doctor saving Luke Smith from being hit by a car was Davies' deliberate reaction to noticing that characters in the first season of The Sarah Jane Adventures were always running across roads without looking where they were going.
• The space bar was claimed by Davies to be set on the planet Zog. This planet's name was used frequently by Davies to explain why he kept the series Earthbound in its earliest phase - believing the audience would not relate to "people from the planet Zog", as a catch-all term for non-human characters.